


The Deeds of Men Are Not Forgotten

by SharpestScalpel



Category: Star Trek
Genre: Eating Disorder, Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-30
Updated: 2010-06-30
Packaged: 2017-10-22 04:32:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/233782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestScalpel/pseuds/SharpestScalpel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spock's captain eats for comfort. But that, as is true of so many things, is not as simple as it first appears.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Deeds of Men Are Not Forgotten

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know, y'all, I'm supposed to be working on kink_bingo squares. But I was driving to work this morning when the germ of this sprouted and it kind of grew a lot larger and faster than I expected it to. Thus, this is unbetaed. But it says a lot to me about the way we form families - the family we choose - and the way we let other people in close so I wanted to go ahead and post it before I chickened out.

  
Spock's captain is a comfort eater.

Spock sits quietly at the table as Jim pushes back from his empty plate. The odor of cooked meat had nearly turned Spock's stomach but he had shown no outward sign as Jim consumed the fried chicken, using his fingers until they were shiny with grease. The chicken had been accompanied by pie and French fries and a strange conglomerate Jim had called hash, another meat product. There had been other foods, uniformly high in calories and fat, piled until Jim's plate was heaped with far more than the captain usually consumed in the course of an ordinary meal. Though there had been other evidence that this was not an ordinary meal by any means.

There had been few vegetables but Leonard had remained strangely wordless on the subject, his habitual berating silenced, not a single snide remark recommending Jim eat a salad for the sake of bowel regularity. Even now, Leonard sits distant on the couch, rolling an empty glass between his palms. The glass had contained nothing but water which was, in and of itself, a unique occurrence in Spock's memory.

Spock's captain is a comfort eater and intellectually Spock is capable of understanding the impetus behind such behavior. The Braetons had held him captive for three weeks, fed him in amounts that were inadequate to maintain optimum human health, such negligible amounts that Jim had rationed what little he did receive that he might stretch the eating of it longer and fool his hunger into believing itself satisfied. It was not rational but Spock did not expect rationality from human impulses, in this case the impulse to overindulge.

Not that Jim had said much regarding his captivity. Jim had spoken remarkably little, other than that which was required to convince his general crew that all was well, since his rescue. Spock had – with Leonard's forceful accompaniment – beamed down to the planet himself once Jim’s location had been assured. It had gone against regulation, a point of fact that Spock expected Jim to point out as a signpost of Spock's humanity. But neither Jim nor Leonard (which was almost enough to actually shock Spock) had spoken of it. The away team had found Jim, had secured the underground facility and turned the rebels over to the planetary justice system. And Leonard had examined Jim as closely as he ever did though Jim had not protested, had submitted to the scanning, to the hyposprays, to the grumbling that Leonard could not contain about the foolishness of captains and the stubbornness of Vulcans.

"Do you suppose," Jim plays idly with his fork as he speaks, scrapes its tines through the vague and unidentifiable remnants of some sort of sauce, "Do you suppose that men are evil or just their deeds?"

Leonard looks up from his survey of his empty glass and Spock is, suddenly and quite fiercely, glad of the doctor's quick emotionalism. "I think there are evil men. I think we've met some of them." Leonard was not sparing in his judgments.

Jim turns in his seat to face his longtime friend and Spock remains behind his closed mouth, observing them both. "I don't know if I believe in that. Evil people, I mean." Jim stands, groans his discomfort and runs a hand over his belly which, to Spock's eye, appears distended with his consumption. "It's too easy to forget events, to explain them away as senseless aberration, when we say the people who caused them are evil."

His captain's pragmatism is often a surprise to Spock who has not yet ascertained the method behind the human's statistically successful yet entirely illogical-appearing decision making process. Spock does not necessarily _agree_ with Jim's reasoning – Vulcan philosophy did not address evil as a construct on its own; such would be illogical – but that Jim would consider the practical application of such human tendency to assign motives is illuminating.

"Evil men seek their own benefit at the expense of others, Jim." Leonard stands to face off with Jim now, a posture Spock has witnessed before between the two of them. The space between them is loud with the restraint that Jim never shows when he is well – Jim is tactile, more so than almost any other human Spock has met. Jim often touchs his friends but when he and Leonard argue, there is no contact, is only the tension of not making that contact.

"But how do you _know_? How do you know it's for their own benefit and that we haven't just massively misunderstood their motives?" It is as though Jim's hands have a life of their own, gesturing unconsciously to underscore his questions because they can not reach for anything else.

For once, instead of continuing the debate, the doctor simply sighs and shakes his head. "We don’t know. And neither do you." He closes the noisy space between them, pulls Jim close in a hug that tucks the slightly shorter blond's head against the rough shoulder of Leonard’s blue medical tunic. "Neither do you. Get some damn sleep, Jim. Doctor's orders."

It is an evening of uncertainty, and Spock has been unsure since he entered the captain's quarters tonight. This moment, this moment that everything else has led to confirms it – instead of the objection Spock expects to hear, Jim slumps, leans against Leonard’s side and exhales as though releasing something he has been holding since his capture. "Yeah, sleep. I can do that. Join me for breakfast though?"

Leonard is a good doctor, gruff in demeanor but gentle with his hands. Spock has witnessed it before, sees it now as Leonard runs a comforting hand down Jim's back and hugs him tight before releasing him. "Wouldn't miss it. Spock either."

This raises further confusion but though Spock is often baffled by human social customs, he knows that, with Jim nodding and heading for his sleeping area, this is not the time to dispute it.

Spock's captain is a comfort eater but perhaps Spock does not entirely understand what is going on here after all. He raises an eyebrow but Leonard has already turned his back to leave and does not see it. Spock has no other option but to follow the doctor out of the captain's quarters where Spock feels he has served no practical purpose whatsoever.

But Leonard waits for him in the corridor, at least, and Spock has some hope that this human will explain what is going on with the other one. His hope rises when Leonard extends an invitation. "Come back to my office with me. We'll talk."

The nod is, as is everything with Spock, crisp and efficient. Leonard rolls his eyes. But they proceed to the office of the chief medical officer with nothing else to say between them, both holding back what needs to be shared until they are alone. Leonard nods to Chapel, the blonde nurse who watches Spock whenever he enters sickbay. She watches him now as he follows the lanky man. It makes Spock uncomfortable.

But Leonard's office is something of a haven – their typical interactions had disguised it from Spock for more time than he now liked to admit but Leonard has a taste for the serene, the calm and rational, and that preference is no where so plain as in his office. Indeed, the sense of order is so great that Leonard's office has become one of Spock's favorite places on board the Enterprise.

Leonard fixes himself a drink from the bottle in its place on one of his bookshelves and jerks his chin to indicate one of the comfortable chairs that occupies the corner away from his desk. Spock sits in his customary place and waits, though he watches, attentive, as Leonard downs his first drink more quickly than Spock would have thought advisable. Then Leonard pours himself another one.

"First thing, and Jim won’t ever tell you this, but the first thing is that Jim was on Tarsus." Leonard slumps into his own chair and leans his head back, closes his eyes against the lights.

Tarsus. There had been few survivors of the ill-fated colony stricken by famine. Most of them had been children of varying ages, some as young as five, few a old as 15. Kodos, the governor behind the eugenics protocol by which some had been spared and others, so many others, had been executed, was thought to be a casualty himself though there were many doubts.

This piece of information clicks into place, though, as if it were something Spock’s analytical mind knew it was missing. The display of eating tonight makes more sense in this context. It was not simply three weeks of near starvation to which Jim was reacting but the memory of that other ordeal, the associative properties of trauma in full demonstration.

Leonard can, Spock understands, see that Spock is aware of the importance of this revelation. "Is this not a violation of doctor-patient confidentiality?" More importantly, though Spock will not admit it, he wonders if Jim will be angry that Leonard has shared this impossibly intimate detail of his past.

"It's in his medical records. But he didn't tell me in a medical capacity and, the setting of my office for this little conversation aside, I ain't telling _you_ in a medical capacity either. You're his friend. It's something you need to know right now." Leonard opens his eyes again, trains the bright blue of them on Spock’s face as though asking a question that Spock cannot discern.

"I would consider him a friend, Leonard. This is true of you both, as you know." They had accompanied him to Vulcan. But Spock felt no need to constantly speak of his admission that they were his friends.

Whatever Leonard's question had been, Spock's answer appears to satisfy it. The man nods, sharp and decisive. "Then you, as his friend, need to know it." Leonard sips from his glass and Spock watches the way his throat works as he swallows the liquid. When he speaks again, Leonard sounds tired, raspier, as though he has given himself permission to let Spock see his honest self. "He doesn’t think Kodos was evil, you know." Leonard continues as though he would rather not allow either of them time to respond to this additional information. "Second thing you need to know is that it's going to take a while. Don't know how long. But it's going to take a while for him to be okay and I need some help with him in the meantime."

It would never occur to Spock to consider himself anything other than intelligent. His intellectual prowess has been a foundational aspect of his identity for as long as he has _had_ identity. Yet Spock feels something shift beneath his perception not only of this man before him but of the man they have left behind for the evening and he wonders why he did not see it before.

They have served as officers together and Jim has Spock's loyalty in a manner which even Christopher Pike did not inspire. Jim is Spock's captain and more and Leonard is, inexplicably, a part of Spock as well. He has called them his friends but, since their return from Vulcan, they are as aware of it as he is and have enveloped him in their friendship more fully in return, so subtly that he did not realize what he had lacked before.

This, Spock is certain, is not the first time something like tonight's meal has happened. He flicks through his memory, every imprisonment, and every cell from which Jim has emerged, seemingly unscathed. Every mission from which they have both returned with empty bellies, Spock's Vulcan control inadequate to block the demands of his flesh for sustenance.

Jim had never complained.

Spock's captain is a comfort eater and Spock had not seen the extent to which Jim required comforting. He had not been allowed to see, to bear witness, his own reserve preventing that permission from being given.

"He'll have already stashed some food in his quarters. Chances are good he'll ferret some around the Bridge tomorrow when he gets on shift." Leonard, Spock is thankful, does not appear to need Spock's acknowledgement of everything he has not understood. Perhaps that is why Jim and the doctor sometimes trade expressive glances, do not need words to communicate. That is why they are friends – and Spock admits to himself that he wants that for himself, wants that with them both now that he knows what he does not entirely have, what he still is required to earn.

"There is a compartment at my station. I shall make it available to him." Jim's reaction is not logical but injury is not logical, healing is not logical. And Spock wants Jim to be well, whether it is logical or not.

The sigh lifts Leonard's shoulders and then relaxes them, reminiscent of the way Jim had released his breath and his tension at Leonard's instruction to sleep, the assurance that Jim did not have to know everything. "Good." It is little but a murmur and Spock understands something else now as well. Leonard had not been certain of Spock's agreement. Leonard had risked these confidences without surety.

He does not wish to fail these confidences.

"Then I will see you in the morning, in the captain's quarters for breakfast?" There seems little else to say. Spock is not tired, but he knows he will require meditation to gain a better understanding of the evening's revelations – both those that were external and those that were internal.

Leonard nods, lost in his own thoughts. Spock is not Jim, can never be nor would wish to be, but as he rises he considers what Jim might do because he _does_ consider this man to be his friend. And he reaches, places a light hand on Leonard's shoulder in passing. "He will recover."

The startlement in the blue eyes is evident even for Spock to read. But Leonard's mouth slowly widens into the doctor’s confident smile and he reaches up to pat at Spock's arm somewhere in the region of his elbow. "Yeah. Yeah, he'll be fine. He always is."

It is, Spock muses, as he nods in return and leaves Leonard alone to his precise and structured environment, regrettable that Jim and Leonard are not lovers. Tactile reassurance would, Spock is certain to .02573 percentage points, aid Jim's recovery as well, would provide valuable confirmation of the immediacy of the present, of his continued existence. Spock sets aside a twinge of very human envy when he enters his own empty quarters – illogical to experience it as the result of speculation on a hypothetical – as unworthy of himself and of the friendship between them and then corrects his reasoning based on what he knows is the source of his minor jealousy; it is not physical gratification which Jim requires, it is the intimacy of being known, being seen for what he is, a complex man in an injured moment.

Spock's captain is a comfort eater but that is far from simple. As he mulls on it, Spock realizes: Leonard sees Jim precisely as Jim needs to be seen – and they both trust Spock to do the same. They might, there is an incalculable chance, see Spock in the same fashion.

Spock is early for breakfast the next morning and Jim smiles broadly when he answers the door.

"You know, Spock, I was thinking of something last night after you both left." Jim has already dressed, has more energy than he displayed the day before, but it seems forced and the table is set with more food than the three of them could possibly consume. "Have you read Shakespeare? Ancient Earth playwright."

"I have not, Jim." Spock settles himself in his place at the table and watches Jim watch the door, waiting for Leonard before he will allow himself to eat.

Jim's mouth is rueful when he glances back to Spock. " _The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones._ "

It has the cadence of an oft-repeated quote, something that Jim has carried with him and turned over and around in his own mind until the formal phrasing and odd Standard words fit his mouth as naturally as any other sentence. Spock thinks that Leonard would know better how to respond, feels himself at a loss for adequate feedback. But Jim is his friend and Leonard has not yet arrived. Spock will try.

"Surak taught us the ways of logic, taught us how to survive as a people. But he did not speak of evil. It is a… foreign concept. Vulcans know of injury; we know of madness. But our morality does not deal in the same fashion with evil." Spock feels his way around the words carefully. He also feels Jim study him and knows the human is listening. "Surak spoke instead of that which we must accomplish: _Ri vath kau eh ri vath rok nam-tor na'etek hi etek kau-tor._ "

Jim speaks before Spock can offer translation. "There is no other wisdom and no other hope for us but that we grow wise." He flushes, bright color reddening the curves of his ears. "What? After the whole thing with your… thing," he waves a hand, dismisses the incident without pause, "I was curious, figured I should read up."

The curiosity of humans. Spock swallows before he spoke again. "I have found, to my own experience, that there is much wisdom in unexpected places. And that the good deeds which men perform are not forgotten by those around them."

Subtlety has always been Spock's safety net; now it feels like a barrier, a high wall between him and what he wishes to say to Jim, that Jim is a good man, a good captain, and that none of it will be forgotten. But again, as is Jim's habit – possibly even Jim's delight – the human surprises Spock. He nods, slow and in understanding. He blinks fiercely and looks back over toward the door, just as it opens with no request for entry. Leonard has arrived.

The doctor, in his usual morning state of rumpled hair and uniform, surveys them both. "Y'all didn’t have to wait on me." He watches Spock with something close to suspicion.

But Jim's smile seems real this time, if small and private. "We didn't, Bones. Let's eat."

The three of them sit down together for breakfast.


End file.
